Peking opera did not exist during the Kangxi period, and the formation of peking opera should be said to be said in the Qianlong period, since the fifty-fifth year of the Qianlong Dynasty, the four emblem classes of Sanqing, Sixi, Chuntai and Chun, which were originally performed in the south, have successively entered Beijing, cooperated with Han tune artists from Hubei, and at the same time accepted some repertoire, tunes and performance methods of Kunqu opera and Qin Cavity, and absorbed some local folk tunes, and finally formed Peking Opera through continuous exchanges and integration.
Wusheng is a character in Peking Opera who is good at martial arts.
Play as a young and middle-aged man who is good at martial arts, which is divided into two categories: long and short martial arts:
Long dependent on martial arts: dressed up on the "tie" leaning, wearing a helmet, wearing thick-soled boots and named. Play as a general, usually using a long-handled weapon. The performance requires graceful, steady, calm, general demeanor and heroism. NianBai pays attention to clear words, steep and powerful, heavy waist and leg skills and martial arts.
Short-strike martial arts: Commonly used short weapons, the performance is known for its light and vigorous movements, and the bravery and fierceness of falling and tumbling. The dance figure requires floating, handsome, crisp, clean and sharp. Wusheng also performed some of the martial arts dramas.
Yang Yuelou was the "superstar" of Wusheng in the late Qing Dynasty, and had an unshakable position in the Peking Opera circle at that time.
When Yang Yuelou was a child, he accompanied his father in the streets of beijing to perform juggling, and later, he became Zhang Erkui's disciple and began to contact Peking Opera. Because he has been crawling and playing in the streets with his father since childhood, Yang Yuelou's physique and flexibility are very good, which also makes him feel like a fish when learning martial arts.
After many years of study, Yang Yunlou came to the Shanghai area and took the stage in Dangui Garden. It is said that what Yang Yuelou is best at is a fold of "An Tianhui", in this play, there is a role of Sun Wukong, which can be vividly interpreted by Yang Yuelou, just like a real monkey! Due to his superb acting skills, Yang Yuelou was also jokingly called "Yang Monkey" by fans.
As Yang's fame grew, he was hand-picked by Cixi as an offering to the inner court, and from then on, his audience became a high-ranking official and nobleman in the palace, becoming one of the most popular plays at that time. It is said that during the Tongzhi period, Yang Yuelou starred in dramas such as "Fan Wang Palace" for a period of time in Jin GuiYuan, and the wife and daughter of a wealthy merchant in Guangdong came to Jin Gui Garden to watch for three consecutive days.
The daughter of a rich merchant named Wei Abao, just seventeen years old, cardamom girls will inevitably have love for the handsome and dashing Yang Yuelou on the stage. When Wei Abao returned home, he immediately wrote a letter to his sweetheart, jumping his mind on the paper, and planning to discuss the marriage with him. Yang Yuelou is a relatively conservative and thoughtful person, he does not think that a woman who has only met a few times can love him to death, so he chose to avoid it.
After Wei Abao heard that Yang Yuelou deliberately avoided himself, he was depressed all day, and it was not long before he fell bedridden with lovesickness. Since Wei Abao's father had been doing business outside the country for many years, her mother made the master for her daughter and sent someone to inform Yang Yuelou of the future, hoping that he could make a matchmaking appointment with his beloved daughter as soon as possible. Yang Yuelou learned of this woman's infatuation from the mouth of the newcomer, so he personally visited the door and wrote a marriage letter with the Wei family to prepare for the wedding on a later date.
However, after Wei Abao's uncle heard about this incident, he thought that Yang Yuelou was a drama and was not worthy of his niece, and unilaterally tore up the marriage contract. After that, Wei Abao's mother quietly met Yang Yuelou for her daughter's heart disease, and asked him to "rob relatives" in the old folk customs of Shanghai and marry her daughter. Who knows, Wei Abao's uncle and the squire actually sued Yang Yuelou, who had robbed his relatives, in the name of "kidnapping and theft".
This affair case not only put the popular drama Yang Yuelou in prison, but even Wei's mother and daughter were implicated. During this period, Wei Abao insisted that everything was voluntary, but Wei Abao's uncle insisted that the two were not "ming media marrying" but "abduction". Although, in the end, with the intervention of Empress Dowager Cixi, Yang Yuelou regained his freedom, the case ended hastily, but the culprit who made Yang Yuelou a crime was not punished, and Wei Abao was also expelled from the house by his father and disappeared.
Yang Xiaolou is the only son of Yang Yuelou, whose real name is Sanyuan. Under the influence of his father, Yang Xiaolou underwent the guidance of various famous teachers and had a special skill since childhood. Unfortunately, because of his tall stature, Yang Xiaolou did not have a suitable role for him on the stage, and could only play some unpopular supporting roles, so in his early years, he was called "ivory rice bucket". Later, yang Xiaolou relied on his father's true biography to quickly become popular with a fold of "Water Curtain Cave" and became a famous character in Tianjin. For a time, one of his lines "flashed open" and spread all over Tianjin, and even the trots in the restaurant learned to shout in Yang's tone.
The nobleman who really made Yang Xiaolou's career was Tan Xinpei, and Yang Xiaolou, who became famous at a young age, came to Beijing to break in and met the famous teacher Tan Xinpei. Under his arrangement, Yang Xiaolou was able to play on the same stage with the master and got the opportunity to play the big axis. Tan Xinpei's greatest kindness to Yang Xiaolou was to teach him the "Battle Wancheng" at the bottom of his box. Since then, no one in the opera industry has called Yang Xiaolou an "ivory rice bucket", but has called him "Living Zhao Yun". Perhaps because of her love for Wu and Wu, Cixi in her later years summoned Yang Xiaolou to the palace and made him another court offering after her father.
Suddenly, Yang Xiaolou became a red man in the capital, and both the prince Belle and the rich man were willing to make friends with him. According to the real literature, once when singing to Lafayette, Yang Xiaolou lost his hand and overturned the props. Yang Xiaolou sweated profusely and asked Lafayette for his guilt, Cixi only lightly asked him the reason, after hearing that it was because he was tired from singing for days, Cixi, who had always been indifferent, asked him about his physical condition with concern, and also ordered people to prepare dozens of taels of silver to let Yang Xiaolou take a good rest.
To this day, many famous masters in China's opera circles, their teachers belong to the inheritance of Yang's father and son, "Chinese monkey opera" carried forward by Li Wanchun and six-year-old children, all of which are inseparable from the Yang father and son who laid the foundation for it, it can be said that they have made outstanding contributions to the development of modern and contemporary Chinese opera.
Resources:
["Yang Yuelou and Wei Abao", "Famous Prostitutes Secretly Save Yang Yuelou"]